ROBERT SCOBLE argues that Google just isn't phased by Microsoft's potential purchase of Yahoo!
1. Google doesn’t mind this deal going through at all. Google knows they will be able to outrun a “Microhoo.” Why do they know that? Because they’ve been able to outrun them both separately. As I said on Channel 5 news on Friday night: put two turkeys together and you don’t get an eagle.
... 3. Email is not where the money is. Google knows this. So, who cares that Microsoft and Yahoo have a monopoly there? There’s only one way to make money with the 600 million who are on either Microsoft’s Hotmail or Yahoo’s email: get them to join other services where there ARE ways to make money. Danny Sullivan told me that this deal is all about search. He’s right. But you gotta be able to get those 600 million people to not just use your email, but come over and use your search. Google is trying to slow down these teams from doing that. But Google knows that even if Microsoft and Yahoo join email and do a pretty decent job of integrating search into there that Google will still see more growth in both email and search than Microsoft and Yahoo together will see. Why? Have you compared Google’s offerings to the others? I have (I am a Hotmail user). Even though I am locked into Hotmail cause my email address is all over the Web I’d rather be on Gmail and Google’s offerings are better integrated and better designed.
I totally agree with this last point. Gmail integrates brilliantly with Google search, Google Reader, Calendar, Maps and so on. Gmail and Google Reader also have excellent, low bandwidth, mobile phone interfaces.
Another thing to note is that Google has probably woken up to the fact that their contextual advertising model is a little broken. By opting advertisers into contextual advertising as a default option, they have exposed their advertisers to click fraud, and non performing traffic. In this industry Google only wins if the publishers who host their ads and the advertisers who pay for those ads make money. For some time we have seen publishers happy with AdSense ads that pay them for each click, but more and...
Posted by: how to make fast money | 01 May 2008 at 08:28